Uber is a tinder box - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/nicoemoe/status/1141889128620888064 <comment><USER2> > We drivers have zero rights. Zero. Uber/Lyfts' idea to start a driver > association is going to do nothing for us. The culture of these co's is that > we don't matter, that we are junk, replaceable, & deserve nothing. We have > to fight together to win this.

Lots of those platforms have a simple business model: Outsource the risk to individual partakers, with that, lowers the price for consumers, but market it as"disrupting".

As long as the individuals to whom the risk is deferred to, are either locked in, or can cover their risks easy enough, there is no problem.

In this, Uber seems to be really pushing the envolope on the amount of risk they can externalize, before their individual risk-takers form a union or walk away.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've all heard stories. Some journalists have even been able to get people on record. And still I have to ask why an anecdotal Twitter rant, something the user seems to specialize in, holds any water whatsoever and how it made it to the front page.

<comment><USER4> > something the user seems to specialize in,

I think this is why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this case, a union doesn't make much sense. If a strong union was formed, the drivers would then be organized enough to form their own co-op. Uber doesn't really own the means of production here. The drivers do. It's not like a Walmart or something where the drivers would need a lot of capital to start a co-op. Wouldn't the capital they need be pretty minimal?

<comment><USER6> > Wouldn't the capital they need be pretty minimal?

Hard to say. Uber seems to employ large numbers of extremely expensive silicon valley engineers doing god-knows-what. Maybe those are necessary to run a successful ride dispatching app?

On the other hand, groups like Lyft, Ride Austin, and Curb seem to have cloned Uber's main app.

<comment><USER7> If other firms are started like a co-op with an app clone like Ride Austin, it could lead to drivers wearing a dozen hats or "employers" and flipping between platforms depending on pricing which may benefit Uber/Lyft who can subsidize costs to undercut competition. Investors may then choose to go with an established firm like Uber as they already are in this cycle and may projects in the works that become the real money maker like self driving technology.

<comment><USER6> AFAIK, many (most?) drivers already do this. They carry two or more phones for Uber + Lyft + Curb...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It will never get better for gig economy. They are basically mturks until automation is ready. It sucks and it is sad, but the problems are bigger than any one company in the US and ultimately the responsibility of the government. Gig economy jobs were never meant to be people's bread and butter. Also if the price went up much people wouldn't pay for it anymore.

<comment><USER9> > ultimately the responsibility of the government

Why do so many people always default to "the government will fix it" instead of expecting people to take responsibility for themselves?

Everyone has the same 168 hours each week. Even with 12 hour days, 8 hours of sleep, 3 hours for meals, 7 days a week, that still leaves 21 hours to do things to change your circumstances. You only need to keep that up long enough to get into better circumstances that buy you more time.

I worked a few years under similar circumstances. It's totally doable, but you have to plan and have to budget your time.

<comment><USER10> You also need health, genuine opportunity and limited other drains on your energy - don't have anyone sick that needs you, and don't have any children. If you've already lost your health, or have someone relying on you as a carer, or are living somewhere without real opportunity (or perhaps very vulnerable to something that'll get you fired or deeper in inescapable debt - one car maintenance issue, one missed bus, one day off sick), well...

Also, you need the ability to plan and budget your time. These are real skills, and if you don't have them, nobody's going to teach you, so you're also out of luck there.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough. I'm as atheist as they come, but I honestly think things worked better when we left those cases you mentioned to the church instead of to government. At least the church operates on the model of "god helps those that help themselves" so there is a genuine effort from those providing relief to get people off the relief instead of letting them become dependent. When the government does it, they are just administering a narcotic, often indefinitely.

community > government

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I certainly wish for better conditions for these drivers (and in a grander sense, the entire gig economy), I also worry about the price sensitivity of riders when they go to use these apps: There are tons of users that will make their Uber vs. Lyft decision based on <$1.00 in fare difference. If these drivers get everything they want, I cannot imagine a scenario where fares do not go through the roof, which will likely lead to a decrease in demand, which will have a negative effect on take-home pay for drivers.

The drivers certainly deserve better, however, I think the toothpaste is out of the tube when it comes to what consumers expect and are willing to pay.

<comment><USER12> It's probably for the best if there's fewer people driving for rideshare companies, who individually make more money. The negative externalities from all those extra cars on the road are fierce, and if those single occupancy trips were charged appropriately then more trips would be taken by alternate methods.

<comment><USER13> > The negative externalities from all those extra cars on the road are fierce

It's better to have an Uber idling at some corner than a traditional taxi driving furiously while trying to find a new ride.

That's what the Uber drivers do in the cities I have lived or visited.

Taxi drivers are the most aggressive and dangerous drivers ever. Almost all crashes I have seen involve one or two taxis.

You can't ignore that externality when discussing the only alternative to taxis we have now.

<comment><USER12> You're still in a car-centric mindset. What I have in mind are non-car transit alternatives, like walking, biking, e-biking, e-scooters, light rail, heavy rail, etc.

Even if the cars are fully electric, they're still dangerous as you point out (until the time they become fully self-driving). So it's best to eliminate as many of them as possible. And a simple tool to do so is to increase taxes on all for-hire vehicle rides, thus targeting taxis and rideshares equally.

<comment><USER13> That sounds ideal.

It also requires to rebuild some cities, something that is way too expensive.

<comment><USER12> And yet plenty of cities worldwide predominantly use public transit to get around (including NYC). So it can and is done, thus it's not "too expensive". Once the transit is there, all that remains is to continue deprioritizing cars, which is quite cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The stories linked sound a lot like the stories of people trying to get support from Google for ... well, anything except big-money GCP issues, really.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, anyway the whole thing of having drivers there is temporary. They are just there to hold market share for these companies to let them start making money properly when the self-driving taxis arrive and drivers are all terminated in the end (maybe Uber Black will still have them). They aren't just expendable - they are a stopgap solution as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not a tinder box. It's a meat grinder. It's an optimized capitalist instrument: extract labour from people at the lowest cost possible to keep expanding.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have trouble taking stories seriously when the person mentions they were almost in tears, I don't know why but it seems disingenuous.

<comment><USER18> I have no trouble. People who make bad financial decisions... not necessarily _catastrophically_ bad, just bad... tend to make other ones, like trying to pay off their debts by becoming an Uber driver because they bought Uber's propaganda lock, stock, and barrel. Being unable to pay off the car could very well be merely an exemplar of a larger problem.

I've had a couple friends of the family I've been watching on similar paths. It's not like they're "handing their money over to scammers" or anything _catastrophically_ stupid, but they make a kinda bad decision, then compound it with some other kinda bad decisions about what jobs to take, and then make some more kinda bad decisions, and before you know it, they're losing their house and declaring bankruptcy. The tears might not just be about this particular thing, but the increasingly undeniable recognition they're on a snowball's path down a slope they've done everything in their power to make avalanche-prone.

The people I know aren't screwing up by thinking they can make lots of money by being Uber drivers without running the math for themselves (that is, it may work for some people but you really have to run the math and be sure before doing it), but it's the sort of thing that would fit right in to their life story right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm really glad I saw this. These are the types of things that I think the media should cover. Instead, we get the same weather, traffic and political BS every day.

Unfortunately, it looks like few other people will see this on HN -- it's already flagged to the second page even though it should easily be the #1 post right now.</comment>


[SH18] Humanity - <AUTHOR> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XttcWn <comment><AUTHOR> Make sure to try commenting out the first two lines to see if your computer can compile the atmospheric scattering!</comment>


Why Women Have Breasts - <AUTHOR> http://www.evolution-x.com/breasts.htm <comment><USER2> I can't help but chuckle every time someone takes a human feature or habit and then attempts to force it into the massive speculative jigsaw puzzle that is biological Evolution. Not to mention the fact that we're conveniently trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where we get to continually redefine the picture on the box so it suits our latest jigsaw piece that we just found or made up...

Talk about a self-validating world-view. We have absolutely no way of ever empirically confirming what the _real_ picture on the box is, yet we continue to find and force _only_ the pieces that fit our conjectured "picture on the box".

This article is borderline farcical given that these conjectures are so far into the domain of unempirical "science" I would hardly call it science or even presentable theory.

I'm all for science when it works on the authority of empiricism, but once this authority is borrowed for claims about the unempirical, that's when I get incredibly skeptical. This is an intelligent community and I hate to see such reddit-level "science" passed around here.

Another example of pseudo science from this website: <http://www.evolution-x.com/dumbgirls.htm>

<comment><USER3> Unlike you, I greatly enjoy articles such as this one.

Let me begin with the caveat that I agree that it is more speculation than science, and it is unfortunate that the author presents it as if it were a scientific paper rather than a blog post. But note that it hasn't been published anywhere, so it is not as if the scientific community is accepting it as science.

You seem to have the opinion that anything that is not science is at best not worth doing, and at worst evil. I urge you to re-examine that assumption.

Now, if there were a scientific way of answering the question that the article considers, that would be a very different situation. In the absence of one, it is ridiculous to suggest that no one should think about it. And if people think about it, they will present their attempted answers to the world. Hopefully, their arguments will rest on logic, even if not empirically verifiable. This is an expression of human curiosity, and I think it is natural and wonderful.

I say we should continue to discuss articles like this, but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories. As our experimental abilities improve, it might turn out that today's speculation is fertile ground for tomorrow's experimentation as a bed of hypothesis to test and accept or discard.

Finally, even if one's sole concern is the dissemination of scientific knowledge, I contend that the article is still useful if it makes people think and learn more about the fascinating, fascinating phenomenon of Fischerian runaway (to give just one example).

<comment><USER2> _\-- In the absence of one, it is ridiculous to suggest that no one should think about it._

I'm not saying that no one should think about it, I'm saying we should have a better filter that immediately separates garbage science from good science. It takes about 10 minutes of reading and a few paragraphs to realize that this is absolute garbage and doesn't need to be voted up.

 _\-- but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories._

Now that I think about it, what really irks me here is that I know people are actually reading stuff like this (which throws around enough scientific terminology and academic quotes to _sound_ reasonable) and then some of those people go on believing that _really_ is the answer to the hypothesis presented.

That is what has happened to a lot of science these days. There's so much semi-believable trash and conjecture like this tossed out in so many different fields of study that I just wish people would get a better sense of what even has a remotely logical basis for validity. It pains me to know that even one person is reading this trash and coming away thinking that _"Gee, science has solved another one!"_ when in fact it has not.

<comment><USER4> He is speculating, and some of his speculation is interesting. At this point, I think you are rationalizing your intuitional dislike of the article. It seems more likely that some of his speculation just rubs you the wrong way.

We're a long way from being able to tell why animals developed the traits they did through evolution. We're a _really_ long way from being able to empirically prove it. That doesn't mean speculation isn't fun in the meantime.

<comment><USER2> _At this point, I think you are rationalizing your intuitional dislike of the article._

Maybe you're not understanding me, and maybe this is partially because you're new to the community...

But when I visit HN, I don't want to be presented with the 99.99% of speculative trash that fills the internet. I can go to Digg or Reddit for this sort of junk science that gets us intellectually nowhere. I (and everyone else) want to see that _quality_ .01% that presents legitimate scientific inquiry, regardless of whether we agree with it or not.

<comment><USER5> I think you don't get it. Speculation is not the same as junk science. Speculation can be insightful, interesting and intelligent or it can be the opposite. Obviously you thought it was trash and just as obviously a larger number of HN'ers thought it was good. You seem to arguing that everyone else should use your criteria for what should be on Hacker News.

<comment><USER5> Actually I had a look at a few of the guy's other articles and it seems he is a little loose with his facts. I love good speculation and I thought that article had some. But the author often does seem to miss the distinction between fact and opinion. Still you (kirse) should be prepared to back yourself up if you are going to label the article as trash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article started out fine. It's an interesting topic that I've never really wondered about and it made me curious. And then I came across things like this:

 _Instincts are coded for by genes. Genes are made up of DNA strands which use a sort of language, Gattaca. In English words, a man's instinct may have been quite simple, and something like the following:

"Look at women, and see if they have a pair of round wobbly things on their chests. If they have such a thing, feel sexually repulsed. Increase this feeling as they are bigger, rounder, wobblier."

One might argue that a man with such an instinct would do well, in the light of the changes in the bodies of women, to delete this programming entirely. However, a much smaller mutation could alter the programming to:

"Look at women, and see if they have a pair of round wobbly things on their chests. If they have such a thing, feel sexually stimulated. Increase this feeling as they are bigger, rounder, wobblier."_

Can we say "pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo" here? Just because it's a smaller change in a natural-language description of an instinct, it doesn't necessarily mean that the mutation is smaller. The author is making a huge, unwarranted and rather silly assumption about the relationship between the DNA structure and the complexity of the natural-language description of the consequences of that DNA structure.

<comment><USER7> The way the author phrased this is unfortunate. However, there are very good reasons to believe that even small mutations could have resulted in large changes in morphology or behavior. A mutation in even a single base-pair could result in cascading effects. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Dr. Boguslaw Pawlowski of Wroclaw suggested a theory to explain permanent breasts in 1999._

I thought this was a dead giveaway that the whole article is a parody, but googling reveals that Dr. Bogusław Pawlowski apparently does exist.

<comment><USER3> I just tried that search, and your comment is already the second result. If that's a real scientist, he/she is certainly not a very prominent one!

<comment><USER9> Or the way Google ranks things is not very suitable to that query (a ka there is no Hacker News/Digg/Reddit for science).

German Google actually finds a lot of links and the HN reference is further down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He's wrong for a simple reason: Breasts are expensive. They are expensive to maintain, and no other animal maintains them. So even if it had an advantage at some point in time, as he describes, rather than maintaining an expensive evolutionary line, this "fashion" would change quickly.

I think that breast serve a concrete purpose that is essential for our society. And the fact that we have breasts is strongly tied in with the difference between us and other animals. We are different from other animals in that we are more clever and more social. We are also different in that we have breasts. It's likely that the two are tied together.

My theory is this: breasts are an age indicator. In traditional human societies it's difficult to judge the reproductive health of a woman. A woman can hide her true reproductive health by various means (like body painting or ovulating on the sly), so as our societies grew bigger and bigger, it was neccessary for the society as a group to make non-hideable means of judging how fit the particular woman is.

Breasts benefit the community more than they benefit the woman according to my theory. I.e, humans are supremely social, and the best evolved human is the one that works the best to move the entire community forward. A society of very selfish people will not survive.

Humans have certain traits that help the community more than they help themselves. Breasts could be one of them.

Small, large, medium, the size of breasts is not really critical. However, perk and 'young' breasts would always be judged more attractive than long sagging breasts. It's clear that the function of breasts is correlated to age. And that sexual attractiveness increases the more attractive the breast is.

Similarly, if a young woman is starved for a long time in a sand blown deserts, the first things to go are the form of the breasts. She is not in an ideal reproductive state, as rearing children requires a lot of water. Old women who are past reproductive age often have their breasts change to a different less attractive form.

Conclusion: Breasts, and some other female parts are a simple indication of youth and reproductive health for a society that is clever enough to fake the other things usually used by other primates.

<comment><USER11> >He's wrong for a simple reason: Breasts are expensive. They are expensive to maintain, and no other animal maintains them.

Your argument is not valid. It's not the cost alone that count, but the benefits minus the costs. Imagine your argument against human intelligence instead: Human intelligence could not have evolved for a simple reason: brains that produce intelligent behaviour are expensive. They are expensive to maintain, and no other animal maintains them.

Also: please read up on the unit of selection <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_selection>. Selection on the level of groups (let alone "society") is very, very unlikely (to say the least) and has long been abonded as theory <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection>.

<comment><USER10> I just read through the group selection wikipedia article. It does not seem to be abandoned as a theory, it seems to be a topic with proponents on both sides, and there are strong arguments for both sides. The selfish gene argument is an old one, and it's just mainstream, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow. I was prepared to dislike this article but I find the argument extremely compelling and well reasoned.

Edit: An especially good point is his suggestion that permanent breasts would likely have evolved _before_ men started to find them attractive. This makes a lot of sense and is consistent with how we think other traits evolved (i.e. feathers came first; then came flying).

</comment><comment><USER12> > Men, meanwhile, are stuck with a sub-optimal instinct. Their desires are > fired by a pair of useless bags of fat. Men cannot afford to lose this > instinct, however. Non-lactating breasts are like nuclear missiles: we only > need them or want them because other people have them.

That has to be the least sexy description of why breasts are sexy. Love it.

</comment><comment> cool-RR A related thing that's been bugging me: Why do guys have balls? Specifically, why is such a sensitive organ placed in such an easy-to-hit place? I know that balls are hanged outside the body because they need to be at a lower temperature, but there must be another reason for it.

<comment><USER13> Well, here is the thing: _no, there does not have to be a reason_.

Nearly all of the problems "accepting" or understanding evolution stem from the mistaken assumption that evolution has "goals", or "reasons" or even that it is the "survival of the fittest." Essentially, from conceptualising it as an active force.

Mutations happen. Some will cause fewer offspring in the same genetic line, some will cause relatively more. Some just stick around because they are not actively harmful.

Your question has many facets: at its simplest, it could be asserted that the benefit outweighs the hazards. You are already making one assumption, though: that they are external because they need to be cooler than body temperature -- but that relationship could be inverse (and in my opinion actually makes more sense if it is.) And so on and so on.

<comment> cool-RR When you see a feature of our bodies that has obvious disadvantages, it will almost always have some redeeming advantage, obvious or not. And the bigger the disadvantage is, the bigger the advantage must be.

I know there are exceptions to this rule, like maybe the appendix or the little finger in our feet, but these are exceptions, not the rule.

So I have pointed out the disadvantage of having the testicles placed in an exposed part of the body; I ask, what is the advantage?

<comment><USER13> I pointed out that there is no need for a _seeming_ disadvantage to be offset by some redeeming advantage.

You could come up with any number of possible reasons if you were looking for a "reason," although it could simply be a side-effect of some other mutation (such as the layout of the pelvis, intestines and abdominal muscles being more efficient for hunting/etc. without the "extra" parts.)

Here is another important inversion that you seem not to have considered, though: do you think that when externalisation first happened, testicles were as sensitive to pain as they are now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cunard-n wouldn't women who were very fertile be able to become pregnant while lactating? Such women would appear to have permanent breasts because they were always pregnant or lactating, thus signalling their fertility continuously and in that way having what appeared to be permanent breasts and permanent fertility? That would be very tiring for those women, but it would give them the advantage of being demonstrably able to become pregnant.Perhaps the bumps evolved as a leveler of the playing field, as it were...

</comment><comment><USER14> Family Guy: So you have something to look at, when you are talking to them

</comment><comment><USER9> "Look at women, and see if they have a pair of round wobbly things on their chests."

That kind of thing always made me wonder a bit: can genes really encode for "like round wobbly things on chests"? There would have to be a complete image recognizer implemented in the genes?

Not that I am saying it is impossible, but maybe it also works together with breast-feeding for a bit (as infants we get exposed to a lot of breast, so that would be an opportunity to learn to like them). And people do develop different and weird things to be attracted to.

Just saying maybe the genes don't encode "like breasts" directly, maybe they encode "like that stuff you are exposed to as a baby" (more specific than that, of course, not everything we are exposed to as infants becomes sexy).

<comment><USER7>
      > There would have to be a complete image recognizer
      > implemented in the genes?

Are you questioning the fact that humans and animals _have_ image recognizers? Or do you doubt that genes play a major role in their development?

<comment><USER9> No, of course humans have image recognizers. I just question that they come preprogrammed with a recognition loop for breasts. Obviously our image recognizers can learn after birth, that is, not all images we recognize are given to us by the genes.

It seems easier to me program reactions to smells, for example, as they are mostly binary receptors?

Also, coming back to the seagull example, I think there are no equivalents for faking beaks to faking breasts? A breast has to look fairly real to be attractive, it is not enough to just have a huge circle with another circle inside of it.

<comment><USER7> I think it is at least _plausible_ that some fairly complex image recognition could be genetically determined. Indeed, the classic example of the seagull proves that pre-programming such circuitry is _possible_ in animals with significantly simpler brains than mammals. I don't think it's such a wild leap that more complicated image recognition _could_ be possible at birth.

At any rate, it's not even necessary that such image recognition be completely formed at birth. It can develop along with the rest of the visual system and other systems that are tuned for sexual attractiveness. (I'm ignoring breasts- for-food-purposes, the recognition of which is largely determined by tactile stimuli, mediated by the trigeminal nerve).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow! Was really a good read. I don't care if the writings are biologically in good quality, but it definitely fed something different in to my tech-wired brain after a long time.

</comment><comment><USER16> The real question is "why don't men have breasts?" The answer is "because if they did, they would stay home and play with them all day long."

</comment><comment><USER17> frankly the reasoning in this article is so weak, it gives credit to a "design" approach. Imagine this equally plausible statement:

"God so loved man, he created beautiful features on woman for his happiness."

<comment><USER9> What do you find weak about the reasoning, specifically?

The differene to the "god created it" theory is that one can be falsified, the other can't. "God made it" is a useless statement with no practical value whatsoever.

<comment><USER18> Could you point to an theory from the article that can be falsified? I'm having trouble thinking how I could devise an experiment to falsify, for example, this:

"Having breasts would be a sign of having a fair amount of fat, and men would find this sexy, because fatter women would give rise to fatter children, who would survive better."

<comment><USER9> That is a quote from the "rival theories" section, isn't it - so it is not the opinion of the author of the original piece.

However, one way to falsify it (for starters) would be to look at the actual survival rates of fat children, and at the fatness of fat women (do fat women actually have fatter children, and do they actually survive better?).

Also one could look at other species to who the same conditions apply, and see if the prediction comes true - they should have something signalling "healthy fat levels", too. If they don't, the theory is in trouble.

Just some things to do off the top of my head. There seem to be countless ways to have a go at that hypothesis, no?

<comment><USER18> Sorry if I picked an inappropriate example. It was quite hard to get to the meat of what the author was saying, which I think just goes further to highlight my point.

And no, I don't think looking at the survival rates of fat children is going to help test the hypothesis. For one thing, we live in very different conditions today to those we evolved in so very few observations of modern society are relevant.

It may well be impossible to test the claim "God made it", but it's bordering on impossible to test these evolutionary claims too.

Not to suggest that I disagree with the study of anthropology -- far from it. I just don't think it's a science.

<comment><USER9> "For one thing, we live in very different conditions today to those we evolved in"

I think ultimately biology goes back to the laws of physics, and I don't think those have changed much in the last couple of 1000 years. Also, I think we have some idea what life was 10000 years ago - there certainly was no breast enhancement surgery, and no anti baby pill, for example.

That is precisely where I see a difference from the "god made it" hypothesis: for evolution and biology, and relationships and stuff, there ARE models, which can be used to predict things (either for the future, or for data points in the past). There is no such thing for "god made it". Therefore I don't understand why you think the "fat" theory can not be put to the test. Maybe my ideas were not convincing - I am not a biologist anyway. But that doesn't prove that there can be no test. In physics, there also is not always a test to test a theory. There are theoretical physicists and practical physicists, and some practitioners are considered brilliant for finding good way to test certain theories.

Of course I admit that strictly speaking, I am not making a 100% case against the god hypothesis. You could answer "of course, god made it so that {insert elaborate theory from physics}, then there would be something to test". But I hope you know what I mean anyway.

Not 100% sure what constitutes a science, either - this discussion made me think of court cases. Suppose you want to find out who committed a murder. You can not test that either - you can only collect evidence that person X did it, but I don't think you can test it (no repeatable test for the future - you can only kill the victim once). Is it therefore not a science? But still it seems possible at least in some cases to identify the murder with high certainty.

<comment><USER18> I'm not trying to make a very important point really, just point out that I don't think anthropological theories can be falsified, despite your assertion otherwise.

That's not to suggest I think the "god created it" theory has the same intellectual standing as the anthropological theories, just that neither of them are scientific.

By the way, according to Popper, a scientific theory is exactly one that can be falsified, hence my introduction of the word "science" into the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reading the article I got the question "Then why people say Paris Hilton is sexy?"

</comment><comment><USER19> I read that essay, and I think the reason for their existence is simpler: they make face-on mating more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing, which facilitates pair bonding.

One disagreement I have with the OP is in the assertion that permanent breasts would be a necessary disadvantage, ignoring the size issue. Permanent breasts probably evolved gradually, from unnoticeable to male-like to small to the size they are today. A prehistoric hominid female who sprouted D-cups among her flat-chested peers would be at a disadvantage for the reasons the OP gave-- she'd appear infertile at all times-- but the permanent-breasts/no dichotomy is false. The change almost certainly occurred incrementally.</comment>


Use ASCII art to help fast module search in Sublime Text - <AUTHOR> http://klogk.com/img/use-ascii-art-in-sublime-text.jpg/

<comment><USER2> And I thought I was the only one doing this! It's an excellent idea if your code evolves too much to keep up with approximate line numbers alone.</comment>


Toward copyleft equality for all - <AUTHOR> https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/ <comment><AUTHOR> This reminded me of the agreement between Qt and KDE, where if Qt is ever made proprietary, KDE can publish Qt under the BSD license:

[http://www.olafsw.de/a-better-qt-because-of-open-source- and-...](http://www.olafsw.de/a-better-qt-because-of-open-source-and-kde/) [https://old.reddit.com/r/QtFramework/comments/e9376a/trouble...](https://old.reddit.com/r/QtFramework/comments/e9376a/troublesome_development_about_relicensing_qt/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21755337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21755337)</comment>


The Convoy Phenomenon - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/07/01/the-convoy-phenomenon/ <comment><USER2> Many systems have a performance vs load curve which, at a given workload, may have two branches, a high performance branch and a low performance branch.

A good example is a web server which is memory constrained. Once it starts to swap, performance degrades rapidly, and memory consumption per unit of throughput goes up dramatically since it takes so much longer to handle each request.

Thus there is hysteresis: a brief load spike kicks off swapping, puts the system in a low-performance state, and then the machine stays in the low- performance state despite having a workload which the system can handle just find if it were in the high-performance state.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Given a single processor, if a convoy exists when a high contention lock is > released then the releasor dequeues all members of the convoy from the lock, > marks the lock as free, and then signals all members of the convoy.

This is a thundering herd problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> How does going from awarding the lock in FIFO order to random order help?

<comment> T3OU-736 Switching to random order from FIFO would increase the chances of breaking the convoy cycle (where a process which initially held a high-contention resource lock comes back at the end of it, to repeat the cycle again and again, since the queue/convoy didn't clear in the time it took for the process to come back)

Edit: message cut off due to fat-finger

<comment><USER4> I'm still not making the connection. If processes enter the queue every N cycles on average, and hold the lock for M cycles, then you'll hit a steady queue state anytime you have N/M runnable processes. If a waiting process becomes unblocked every M cycles how does it matter whether it came from the front, back, or middle of the queue? Isn't the rate of enqueueing and dequeueing processes the same in any case?

<comment><USER5> At least in Windows, the theory (edit2: theory of lock convoy mitigation) goes something like this:

\- There is a queue of threads contending on a lock.

\- There are some threads in that group that release the lock, do some context-switchless work, and need the lock again.

\- In a lock convoy, these would go back to the end of the queue while any other threads that were waiting on the lock now need to be readied and context-switched in.

\- By instead making the locking unfair and letting the next ready process grab it, there is a better chance that the threads which have quantum slices left will finish out their use of the lock and exit the convoy.

Synchronization objects were redesigned in Vista around this mechanism of taking a ready thread instead of the next thread in a fair queue.

I suppose something similar is at play in the article ? I don't see how just randomness fixes anything.

(edit: formatting)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from running a Code Club for Kids - <AUTHOR> https://thelab.o2.com/2014/04/lessons-from-a-code-club/

<comment><USER2> While I started reading I was meh-ing to myself and thinking that it's nothing special, but I love points 3 and 4, asking peers for help.

Those points quickly changed my perspective around. Learning this way is a great idea, and it is quite beneficial (At least while learning coding in a non-competitive environment).

Discussing about open source with kids and the ending 30 second presentation times are great ideas as well.</comment>


One third of iPad users have never downloaded an app - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11605682

<comment><USER2> What?! Absolutely wrong. Look at Chart 6 in the survey they link to, which is even titled:

 _91% of iPad owners have downloaded an app, many of them have already purchased apps_

I presume they meant to say 32% have never purchased an app, which is quite a different proposition.

<comment><USER3> 9% is still too high. Seems like a lot of wasted money.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of basic functionality built into iOS these days so someone who buys an iPad just to browse the web, photos, e-mail, music, etc really doesn't need to download any additional apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I convinced my dad to get an iPad when our old family PC (which, last I heard, took about 15 minutes to start up) finally died.

He's downloaded one app: Google Earth. He was a Google Earth fanatic on the PC (he's an urban planner), so it was a no-brainier. Besides Google Earth, he uses the YouTube app, and occasionally uses Maps, but he spends the vast majority of his time in Safari. He reads the New York Times and Toronto Star, checks his Gmail, loads up recipes, and generally does the same things he did in Chrome on the old PC.

I've tried to convince him to check out some other apps, but he has almost no interest in doing so, and for what he does, why should he? Safari is a consistent interface, sites work the same as they do everywhere else, and he doesn't need to learn a bunch of different interfaces.

This is why I don't get why people seem to have this impression that Apple is somehow anti-web. The iPad is, for the average person who doesn't need to do very much data entry, the best browsing experience around. Hell, Apple has pioneered WebKit, which has near-single-handedly brought mobile browsing into the 21st century. They know how important the web (as in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) is, they just aren't putting all of their eggs in one basket.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nielsen sent out the wrong numbers in its initial release. I wrote about it for GigaOM and updated the post with the real figures here: [http://gigaom.com/2010/10/21/books-and-video-win-on-the- ipad...](http://gigaom.com/2010/10/21/books-and-video-win-on-the-ipad-and- users-are-buying/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I know the stats in the title are wrong, but console manufacturers have a tough time just getting people to get the machines online, let alone buying games through their stores.

Nintendo has a "Connection Ambassador" programme: "Nintendo [...] will give players 500 free Wii Points each when they help another person connect their Wii to the Internet"

</comment><comment><USER8> Unlike the iPhone, you can comfortably do everything on the browser. Also, the apps they start you out with are enough for most common activities.

<comment><USER9> Kindle and a tuner (of the instrument variety) are the only two apps I use that aren't standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just use Safari and only downloaded two free games to test the AppStore but haven't opened them more than 5 times.

Even for mail and calendar I use the browser, although I could use the native apps.

The only 3rd party app I used for a while was VLC because I don't have the time to transcode videos. But even that is getting ignored now as the iPad is basically a nice browsing machine -- video works best on the laptop.

</comment><comment><USER11> You all have read this wrong! It says a survey of 5k consumers of multiple devices, which 32% of the questioned people who owned an iPad have never downloaded an app. That's 32% of the iPad owners questioned, not Apple's total units sold. Firstly we don't know what % of the 5k were iPad owners. It could have been 3 then only 1 out of 3 have never downloaded an app. Does not sound so bad now then? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER12> iBooks? It is an app and requires downloading.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's low. I would expect 10% of people use their iPads as table mats, another 10% never got the "damn thing to turn on" and the final 10% just bought one because all their rich friends had one, without ever using it.

<comment><USER14> I would agree that the number is low too, but only for the reason that for a large segment of users, their iPad activity is centered on the browser.</comment></comment>


A new mobile friendly testing tool - <AUTHOR> https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/05/a-new-mobile-friendly-testing-tool.html <comment><USER2> typical google. the linked page won't load without JavaScript, and the tool is just a api that returns if "page seems ok on mobile". waste of time.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some problems in need of a solution in the travel industry? - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I've been working on a side project focusing on the travel industry for a while but it seems that this market is very overcrowded at the moment, and unfortunately I am finding it very  very hard to come up with something unique enough that will convince people to use my product and everyday I'm feeling less and less motivated to keep going.
I have a few years of experience as a software developer in the travel industry and would love to work on something innovative that solves a REAL problem in the travel space, but I just can't come up with anything.
Any Ideas?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> sounds like you should pick another industry that is not "very overcrowded" and one you see a real problem to solve...</comment>


Ticketmaster is still using Flash in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://help.ticketmaster.com/why-isn-t-my-interactive-seat-map-working/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just received this on a newsletter...

[http://imgur.com/jGhKmGy.jpg](http://imgur.com/jGhKmGy.jpg)

It's in Spanish, but these are instructions on how to install Flash on a number of browsers.</comment>


Rapid read protection in Cassandra 2.0.2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/rapid-read-protection-in-cassandra-2-0-2

<comment><USER2> Does Cassandra follow semver[1]?

[1]: [http://semver.org/](http://semver.org/)

<comment><USER3> Short answer: no.

Longer answer: the only guarantee that's carved in stone is that in X.Y.Z is backwards-compatible for all values of Z. Past that YMMV, e.g., typically X.Y+1 will be network-compatible for rolling upgrades, but we'll maintain disk-compatibility for longer.</comment></comment>


ST Microelectronics $15 Cortex-M4 Development Kit - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnx-software.com/2011/10/28/st-micro-15-usd-stm32f4-discovery-cortex-m-development-kit/

<comment><USER2> 168 MHz, since I couldn't find that in the article. The price/performance seems poor compared to 65-cent M3s, but the performance looks impressive.

<comment><USER3> This is $15 for an entire board, but it will probably take a bit of time to get volume pricing lower. For $15 it seems like a good deal for a development board and chip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They recently sent one of these to me for free [1] as part of a promotion for robotics enthusiasts. It runs DFU for its boot process, they have examples for various compile system IAR/Keil etc but no explicit gcc support.

Looks similar to the NetDuino space although frankly I'd love to see a microSD card slot for holding stuff rather than simply relying on the on-chip flash.

I'd love to understand the lowest cost HDMI compatible frame buffer interface one could put on these. I've got an idea/application that I started prototyping on a Chumby which would benefit from their price point.

[1] <http://www.st.com/internet/mcu/class/1734.jsp>

<comment><USER5> With an ARM11, HDMI and SD card, would a Raspberry Pi suit your needs? <http://www.raspberrypi.org/>

ETA December at current rate and enough real world examples at the alpha stage to be a cut above vapour :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is a pretty great deal. Mouser has the chip alone in qty 1 at $17

[http://www.mouser.com/search/refine.aspx?N=4294966131&Ke...](http://www.mouser.com/search/refine.aspx?N=4294966131&Keyword=STM32F407VGT6)

</comment><comment><USER7> Where can I order? None of the distributors mentioned in ST site have this in stock.

<comment><USER8> Digikey has some in stock, but at $19.50.

[http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/STM32F4DISCOVERY/49...](http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/STM32F4DISCOVERY/497-11455-ND/2711743)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do uboot and/or Linux run on this board?

<comment><USER10> It has 192 KB of RAM.

<comment><USER11> But no MMU</comment></comment></comment>


Unicorn, e-scooter startup from co-creator of Tile, shuts down with no refunds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/7/21000094/unicorn-electric-scooter-shut-down-refund-tile <comment><AUTHOR> They went from product announcement to shutdown in 6 months. That seems like really bad planning.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's like a real Kickstarter

</comment><comment><USER3> It wasn't a unicorn when there are a dozen or two companies doing it. They were a normal business that tried and got beat by the competition.

<comment><USER4> Note the brand was named Unicorn - the article isn't calling the startup a unicorn.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Flow Dashboard – open-source habit tracker and personal analytics app - <AUTHOR> http://flowdash.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> This started out as a learning project (objective: collect a bunch of my personal data, connect it with BigQuery, and play with regressions in TensorFlow), but I've found it useful in the last 2 months of usage to outsource memory for the purpose of tracking tasks, goals and projects, on multiple time scales.

There are plenty of habit trackers out there, obviously, so this has really been an exercise in figuring out how to integrate a tracking app as seamlessly as possible into a daily routine, while generating a dataset that has the potential to give meaningful personal insights. The jury's still out on that.

Testers, collaborators, and feedback of all kinds welcome.

[https://github.com/onejgordon/flow- dashboard](https://github.com/onejgordon/flow-dashboard)

<comment><USER2> I've been toying with various projects in this area myself, so I'll definitely give it a look!

Is there any chance you could make a video that shows how the app works? The screenshots look nice, but especially with an app that is 'always there' a video showing how it works in practice is important.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed the screenshots dont give a clear enough overview of the functionality, and a video is a good idea. Let me see what I can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool project. I think the front page should have a little more information on it though, in fact if [http://flowdash.co/app/about](http://flowdash.co/app/about) was the front page that would be perfect.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is good feedback, will definitely work on a more informative first page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just signed up and this is almost exactly what I've been looking for.

The Github repo mentions a REST api that can be used to push arbitrary data into the system. Are there any docs around this yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for having a look, and glad to hear it. No API docs yet, but I've just created an issue for this ([https://github.com/onejgordon/flow- dashboard/issues/24](https://github.com/onejgordon/flow-dashboard/issues/24)).

If you're familiar with python webapps, you can see api.py:TrackingAPI, which takes a date and a simple JSON data param.

Let me know if that looks like it fits your need, and if not, I'd be curious to hear more about how you'd like such an API to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work. I think quantified self is one of those area that is under-looked. We put all this energy into BI (Business Intelligence) but we don't put much effort into making products to help people better understand themselves.

I'm working on a similar project myself but I welcome innovation in the space.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree on QS vs BI, and I think it all comes down to monetization. I'm sure more QS apps will come, but I'll be worried about data use and privacy unless there's a very clear alternative business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks really cool! It looks much more feature rich and UX-friendly than any similar tools I've ever seen.

I can't wait to poke around this a bit more. It also uses the same stack I'm planning to use on my next personal project (Django + React).

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting. My main concern is that such systems should suit their owners very well. But, of course, everyone has their own preferences regarding task management, time tracking, app ecosystems, usage patterns etc. Consequently, it is very hard to make a single open source project that fits everyone.

Me and my friend were working on a very similar project for the last 10 months, and we still hesitate to publish it (also, it is written in Scala, thus limiting potential audience). Below, I provide more information about our work, some insights discovered during development, and future plans. I hope it could help other projects too.

The project is focused on outsourcing memory, providing smooth, most of the time automatic, time-tracking, being hackable and keeping personal data private.

Key features needed for that are different integrations (we use JIRA, Trello, Hubstaff, Trakt.tv, Apple Health, sleepasandroid, Beddit); constant location tracking; convenient input (currently, Telegram bot with NLP capabilities, suggestions and autocompletion).

Eventually, it turned out, that chatbot interface works like a charm for actions like forwarding links to read them later, managing tasks in JIRA (when chatbot sends you updates, and then you can use your messenger to comment on or manage tickets; also works well with time-tracking), aggregating notifications.

We also have some analytics: daily briefs, time tracking summaries, metric- based reports. Another features include global search, flashbacks, GPX track export (to use with Lightroom, for example), history-based notifications. Future plans include: finance tracking, delivery tracking, ReSpeaker integration, newsfeed aggregation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your project sounds very interesting, and feature packed. Will it be open source, commercial, both? Thanks for sharing your insights on the agent interface, I've found that I (unexpectedly) use the messenger bot frequently for simple 'task completed' functionality and others.

Is there anything public on the web about your project at this point?

<comment><USER7> It was started as a pet project with no plans regarding its future. As it turned out, recent hype around AI, personal assistants, privacy and wearables created some interest around such type of projects. It is definitely going to be OSS, if we decide to publish it. I see no other way to make it transparent and secure, also people who are ready to provide full access to their accounts and location to third party service aren't target audience =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome project. Currently I use org-mode for this but Flow Dashboard seems way prettier and user-friendly. It may not be flexible enough, but as it is open source I may be able to make it fit my needs.

Sadly I tried to log in with my gmail account and it just returns me to the Login page again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you ever make it into the app? If not, what browser are you using? If you find steps to reproduce this issue, please let me know, or file an issue on the repo.

<comment><USER8> Chromium in Debian. I installed Firefox now and it does work.

I'm not going to migrate from Org-Mode and Emacs as I'm too invested there but I find Flow Dashboard a very good project for people who are new to Quantified Self and doesn't want to spend dozens/hundreds of hours setting up their own system or don't need that level of detail/features.

Anyway, these are some features which I miss:

\- Being able to clock inside tasks. Also expected time to completion of the task so you can adjust future predictions.

\- Child tasks. At least projects should have them. Common tasks may just have checklists.

\- Good editor and markdown support for the journal.

\- Integration with some finance/budgeting app like YNAB or Ledger.

\- Work without Google AppEngine. My journal shouldn't be a hack or a search warrant away. Too sensitive.

\- Being able to schedule the tasks and habits. Maybe integration with Google Calendar, but privacy again..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the looks of this, can I import all of my current time data somehow? I totally want to dig into the code when I have more time this summer because I've been wanting this exact tool. Thanks for posting this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look! What kind of time data do you want to import?

<comment><USER10> Not OP, but I have a lot of tasks in Google Tasks, and goals & journaling etc. in Google Calendars. Being able to import, or (even better) sync with these would be a real winner for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fully agree, and have the same need, in fact as I use gCal/goals frequently (which conveniently integrate with gFit), and end up having to double-mark currently.

It seems like Google's APIs for tasks/keep/goals, etc are in flux right now, which is not ideal, but I will be looking into an integration to remove that redundancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently discovered 'hacknplan' which has some nice project tracking features particularly suited to game dev, but could be used for anything... hacknplan.com, easy to use and I like the milestones and kanban style.

I wouldn't attempt using more than once tracker, and I'm not keen on tracking personal matters. I prefer the freedom of taking action on personal matters in response to how I feel and what's happening around me. A dynamic organic order, (or permissible lack of discipline).

</comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of an idea I've had for a while.

TLDR: why are we relying so heavily on cloud based search engines to organize hyperlinks? Local bookmarking tools could be so much better!

I've often thought it'd be great to have some kind of browser extension that used search queries to automatically tag and categorize bookmarks and threads of browsing history. Then, instead of having to manually put bookmarks into "folders", or think of tags, they'd be organized smartly based on the tree of searches and links that they are related to.

Here's a more concrete example: Say you searched for "curry recipes". You click through a number of different pages, finding one you like. When you bookmark it, bookmark would carry that "curry recipes" metadata, and be more searchable in that way.

A more complex example. Say you search for "gravitational force", and end up reading part of a blog post, then clicking through to another page and another. The third page is really interesting. So you bookmark it. Since the original search of "gravitational force" was the seed of finding this third page, that query would, by default be associated with the bookmark, even if it's not directly related.

This could be extended with all kinds of interfaces. For example, your browser could display a kind of "tree" of recent search queries at all times, which could be pruned, cleared, or added to at any time. A new tab would by default inherit the old tab's tree. Bookmarking would flow naturally from this, as a way of snapshotting a given thread of browsing.

Another, more complicated option would be to bookmark actual threads or trees of links themselves. A cluster of related wikipedia pages could be bookmarked _together_ and traced to the search query that initiated their discovery.

If a page was implicated in multiple bookmarked clusters, it'd be easier to find it in your local bookmarks.

The upcoming annotation standard could end up being a great tool for extending this idea: [https://hypothes.is/blog/annotation-is-now-a-web- standard/](https://hypothes.is/blog/annotation-is-now-a-web-standard/)

<comment><USER13> > TLDR: why are we relying so heavily on cloud based search engines to > organize hyperlinks? Local bookmarking tools could be so much better!

Isn't this just a variation of the old pagerank algo?

<comment><USER14> Yes - though I think it's in the same way that DropBox is just a variation of rsync.

That is to say, yes, but I think I'd like the proposed solution so much more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> congratulations! it looks really slick and powerful.

I'm working on a simpler/cuter solution for habit tracking and quantification ([http://willyoudidyou.com](http://willyoudidyou.com)) but i think flow dashboard looks great for hackers and quantification enthusiasts that want total control and to create their own integrations.

</comment><comment><USER16> Trivial suggestion, but in addition to adding the info and a video to the homepage, a big visual representation of the project as soon as the page loads would be awesome, and having a sign up option in addition to the login would be more clear, but great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed and agreed, thanks for this feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice work. Congratulation! However, I personally find it very difficult to use the app on Desktop. I had to click the App Menu on the left repeatedly to navigate to other pages. Can you make it visible by default on desktop?

</comment><comment><USER18> I really like the look of this, though is there any way to self-host without google cloud components?

From the local devserver instructions: >gcloud components update

Looks like there isn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at present. I chose GCP/GAE because I know it well, and there's some convenience when integrating with other google cloud services (like BigQuery, gSheets/gCal, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Flow owns none of your data. That's yours."

But it is stored in the cloud?

Only google login? Guess I won't be trying it out then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's a web application.

A number of people have commented that Google login only is a barrier, so will definitely be adding another signup method.

The source is on GH with instructions to spin up your own instance if you prefer.

<comment><USER19> I guess calling it an app and saying that I own the data made me think it was an electron-app or something.

If I can't export the data (I see nothing about it) and it's not stored on my device I think it is a stretch to say that I own my data. I get that it might not the first feature to implement, but for the future that is something that at least I would expect.

<comment><AUTHOR> All data is exportable from the reports page. Looks like I fail to mention that in the about text, I'll add it there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really nice design - love the charts and how you can track any activities. Very cool project!

</comment><comment><USER21> Very cool. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER22> Signed up, and using this! I'm enjoying it.

</comment><comment><USER23> man, that's awesome!)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm very unahppy that I need to make a choice before seeing anything on the page.

And what does it offer beside what any other tracking software offers? I still don't know after reading the page. Looks like the same thing a thousand others have done before.

<comment><USER15> Curious, what do you want to see?

<comment><USER25> As someone as already mentioned - this: [http://flowdash.co/app/about](http://flowdash.co/app/about)

Awesome app though. Good features and aesthetics</comment></comment></comment>


BugRex: Fix HTML, CSS and JavaScript Bugs with Live Chat - <AUTHOR> http://www.bugrex.com/?utm_source=designernews&utm_medium=designernews&utm_campaign=designernews&utm_source=designernews <comment><USER2> Nice project, I submitted the form for kicks.

Just an FYI, uBlock is killing the chat form on the right. I had to disable it to get the form to show up. I assume this is because of the Olark integration.

A nice way to avoid this would be to set a timeout of a few seconds and, if that div is still empty, show a message to the effect of "Nothing here? We use a third-party chat provider that is unfortunately sometimes blocked by ad- blockers. Please disable your ad-blocker to proceed. We don't serve any ads on BugRex."

<comment><USER3> Oh, thanks for the tip! We'll definitely look into that. :)

</comment></comment><comment> work-on-828 Is it possible to pay extra for explanations that will help me build a better mental model of HTML & CSS layout?

Aside from flexbox[1], I've felt for years that the mental model of layout I gained from reading explanations of the box model, blocks, and inline-blocks never made sense.

[1] Folks should totally check out [http://flexboxfroggy.com/](http://flexboxfroggy.com/)

<comment><USER4> how much would you pay for such a thing?

<comment> work-on-828 You know, I don't actually know. I guess once I get a job again, probably $20-$35?

<comment><USER4> send us an email to firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yesterday this was called ReactChat and a more amateur looking free chat type thing. Not a criticism, but it is very interesting to see a service morph like this in real time :-) I think there is a lot of potential here if done right, so best of luck.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the ReactHelp.com was our first MVP, but we wanted something a bit broader, so we got this one up yesterday. Glad you like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great initiative. I already got some interesting approaches around a ReactJS problem.

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks, glad you liked the help you got.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just curious, how many experts do you currently have?

<comment><USER3> Hey, we have four.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool, Andreas. Best of luck with this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Become an expert link leads to 404

<comment><USER3> Thanks, it's now fixed!</comment></comment>


CodeMirror 6 Enters Beta - <AUTHOR> https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/codemirror-6-beta.html <comment><AUTHOR> i, for one, will try porting my custom Sublime syntax theme and see how many tokens are missing (hopefully very few) and how well a single theme works across multiple languages in terms of consistency.</comment>


Report: Twitter CEO took a Russian impostor's bait in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/report-twitter-ceo-took-a-russian-impostors-bait-in-2016/#p3 <comment><USER2> If this is true it seems Russia is doing a bang up job taking two groups who are heavily involved in identity politics and putting them against each other, destroying western civilization in the process.</comment>


Performance of green threads and why it matters - <AUTHOR> http://250bpm.com/blog:81 <comment><USER2> >First of all, go() statement in Go language does parallelism in addition to simple green-threading. With all the talk about 'concurrency is not parallelism' that seems to be part of Go's DNA, I find the design decision to support both using a single statement a bit weird.

Have to agree on this, and often wonder the same thing.

<comment><USER3> I'm having a hard time understanding where you would want concurrency without the benefit of parallelism where available? I also personally consider the idea of single-core concurrency as "not parallelism" to be semantics. It may not be _truly_ parallel, but both routines are getting CPU time in the same algorithm, so, in terms of programmatic considerations, to me the two (at least with Go) are basically the same.

<comment><USER4> So you don't need locking.

<comment><USER5> Non-parallel (perpendicular?) green threads are semantically indistinguishable from parallel green threads. If you need locks with parallelism, you need them with green threads. Any locking unique to parallelism is handled by the runtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a good (introductory) resource on implementing green threads: [http://c9x.me/art/gthreads/intro.html](http://c9x.me/art/gthreads/intro.html). It's helpful for learning how they work in practice.

Are people running into performance issues with green threads in practice? It seems like they're already pretty performant, particularly if you're using them more as an abstraction for concurrency than as a way to get parallelism. There are lots of problems that are trivial to solve with green threads/coroutines but that are very difficult without them. If you really care about performance you probably shouldn't be using green threads at all but should instead be running separate processes on dedicated cores. Green threads also have the advantage over kernel threads in that they don't require the overhead of a kernel context switch, since the context switch can be done in userspace, which requires saving much less context and also affects your caches less.

<comment><USER7> > There are lots of problems that are trivial to solve with green > threads/coroutines but that are very difficult without them.

Name at least one that cannot be solved better without them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Network stacks. And pipelines in general.

<comment><USER7> Be specific. Network stacks and pipelines are easier even with the most basic event loop, because you simply don't have to think about concurrent memory access whatsoever. But you do with green threads and coroutines.

<comment><USER8> Event loops lose your call stack; you need to rewrite your program as a state machine so you know where to pick back up; or you need to rewrite your program in continuation passing style with callbacks, like JavaScript; or you automate that CPS transform, and you've just reinvented green threads again.

<comment><USER9> I agree with what you (and the others) say.

Regarding green threads and state machines I would however add that while green threads allow to ditch some state machines (e.g. ones that wait until a complete packet was received) you won't get rid of all of them, e.g. you will still need state machines for lots of protocol implementations. E.g. if you are implementing the websocket protocol or HTTP/2, you have some interaction between incoming data, data that must be sent out and requests from the [library] user. The state of the connection depends on all of these, so you need some kind of connection state machine which would run most likely in it's own green thread (in addition to a sending thread and a receiving thread and a user thread). And now you have to implement clean synchronization between all of those threads. The lack of necessary synchronization (and the ability to observe a huge amount of state at once without danger) can make the implementation a little bit more easy in my experience. But here I also have to agree with strmpnk that a good design is necessary for both approaches, and accessing lots of shared mutable data in multiple callbacks is probably also not the cleanest approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Goroutines use segmented stacks that allows them to grow dynamically as needed. so 4k goroutines != 4gb of ram. They currently start at 8k and grow as needed but copies are incurred to keep it contiguous.

In lthread I preallocate fixed size 1mb stack but madvise after a coroutine yields if the stack shrunk. No copies are needed but it does consume the vm address space.

<comment><USER11> Go hasn't used segmented stacks in quite a while. Go now has 2k stacks and uses stack copying to grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> we built a green threads implementation for VAX/VMS in 1984 with pre-allocated stacks because performance. the key is to put guard pages in between the stacks to protect from stack overruns.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a very big difference between implicit flow control, that you have with green threads and explicit one, that you have with "reinvented green threads", as you call them. First one will force you to think about synchronization to access your memory, but the second one - won't. It will also let you do clean cancellation, etc., that you won't be able to do with green thread.

Downvote all you want.

<comment><USER13> Go is an interesting language but the fanboys on HN tend to down vote any criticism. Same goes for the other golden child, Rust.

<comment><USER14> This breaks the site guidelines by calling names ('fanboys') and complaining about downvoting.

The problem with comments like this is that they degrade the discourse even if they're true.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Europe's Tourist Hot Spots Suffer as Big-Spending Americans Stay Away - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-tourist-hot-spots-suffer-as-u-s-big-spenders-are-told-to-stay-away-11594132862 <comment><AUTHOR> _"We desperately need the Americans to solve their coronavirus situation or we are going to be ruined," says Mr. Rizzo._

 _"An Italian orders a coffee, Americans order drinks and food and they are generous with tips."_

 _The 4.4 million Americans who traveled to Italy last year spent €5.5 billion ($6.2 billion), making them the highest per capita spenders_

 _Travel and tourism account for 13% of the economy in Italy and 9% in France and Europe as a whole_

There are some who bemoan mass-tourism and would like to see less of it. There are some locals who would rather have their hometowns for their own pleasures instead of being overrun by tourists. But these anecdotes and statistics can help explain why mass-tourism is here to stay. There is simply too much money and too many job opportunities in tourism, which cannot be replaced overnight by something else.

If one wants to curb over-tourism, a necessary part of the solution would be to figure out alternative opportunities for people dependent on tourism as well as a smooth transition plan to that alternative.</comment>


What Happens When You Send a Zero-Day to a Bank? - <AUTHOR> https://privacylog.blogspot.qa/ <comment><AUTHOR> (Actually this should be .com. But I am in Qatar now, maybe that is why.)

Hello all, please help with CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. I have set on this story for many year for fear that something bad would happen to my family or me. Now I realize life is too short -- you should open source everything like you will die tomorrow.

Vendors always play this game. I have another 0-day from Apple I will be publishing soon that I announced to them in 2015. It is a simple matter and they are "still working on it". I never get paid for this work so I don't have time to sit around and wait while other people play me. It will be easier for me to use automatic publishing dates next time this happens so it removing my own personal judgement from the situation.

END RANT. Thank's for being there.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice you received but didn't appreciate until later? - <AUTHOR> Broadly speaking what advice have you received which you at the time did not fully understand but which you later came to truly appreciate?<p>I've only later in my life come to realize that for some advice to be fully appreciated and understood you have to live through them. As in you have to learn to appreciate them by experiencing them - often by not adhering to them. I realize if I have had a more open perspective around such advice at a younger age I would have saved myself a tremendous amount of time learning from others' experiences. Since I still have a long way to go I realize there are still plenty of such nuggets out there which I (and others here) can learn from moving forward - assuming you actually don't need to live through them to appreciate them. <comment><USER2> "If things seem crazy, they're usually crazy for a reason."

I underestimated how important missing context is to understanding why certain things are the way they are. It's easy to be "Captain Hindsight" but harder to have empathy for the decision makers who made things a certain way.

</comment><comment><USER3> "When about to die, nobody asks for more time in the office". Since I went bankrupt my family has been a great source of help and stability, but companies don't care. You're always replaceable.</comment>


Classics for every aspiring leader's bookshelf (Patrick Henry Winston) - <AUTHOR> https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/index.html <comment><USER2> I happen to be reading Battle Cry of Freedom right now, and I second its recommendation. Its wonderfully written, and its striking how many of the issues dominating the decades leading up to the Civil War feel very similar to the issues of today.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice list, terrible formatting on this website. whoa!</comment>


The price of connection: 'surveillance capitalism' - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/the-price-of-connection-surveillance-capitalism-64124 <comment><AUTHOR> Shoshana Zuboff (retired Harvard prof) is writing a book on this topic, due next year. She spoke at a 2014 conference, [http://davidcharles.info/2014/10/shoshana-zuboff-reality- nex...](http://davidcharles.info/2014/10/shoshana-zuboff-reality-next-big- thing/)

 _" If the people are not Google's customers and they are not Google's employees, then what does Google need people for? Only one thing: data. "Data is becoming everything," Shoshana says. "The ugly truth here is that this so called 'big data' is plucked from our lives without our knowledge and without our informed consent." This big data, which Shoshana calls 'big contraband' or 'big stolen goods', is sucked from our social media, from our smartphones, from our every networked click, type and touch ... "In the shadow of the dark Google, it has become fashionable to mourn the passing of democracy," Shoshana concludes. "But if we leave behind democracy, we leave behind the best part of ourselves."_

24 min video: [https://vimeo.com/110222526](https://vimeo.com/110222526)

</comment><comment><USER2> "It's puzzling we are not already more angry about this transformation"

I don't think it is. We are the 1% who understand tech enough to make a rational choice of which services to use or avoid, use a VPN, ublock etc to lessen our exposure to personally acceptable levels. We're aware that some tracking goes on fingerprinting. The article seems to be written by the 1% for the 1%. The people who read these sorts of articles and have read enough to know the basics of tracking, retargeting, bubbling, IoT, surveillance, Snowden etc.

For the rest, and I include nearly all "tech natives" like our kid's generation, and plenty who should know better, if an app get's mentioned it's installed and the permissions OK'd, then they run it, _now_ they wonder what it is and if it's any good. If you try and increase awareness they're about as interested as they were in maths lessons (or whatever your most hated thing was). When Snowden was fresh and being discussed it was "but terrorists", "but safety" and "I don't care if NSA read my pizza orders and stupid texts". Completely missing the point then.

Their idea of a complex password is usually laughable going on friends and family tech support. No amount of hinting gets it acceptable, or willing to use a manager.

IoT is cute light bulbs, smart baby monitors and neat gadgets. No realisation that the security of most is shit, that a surprising amount of cams are online, or what it means to put something on the network.

The transformation isn't realised. The implications aren't either. Most people's _only_ awareness of bubble effects is wondering why they've seen no FB posts from their sister in ages (Edgerank decided they weren't worthy). There's _no_ awareness of it in search, or news, or youtube and assume, no matter how skewed their results are, that what they see is the "truth". If there's a bubble effect for extremist and conspiracy theorists too, we should maybe be concerned.

I gave up even trying to educate on this stuff.

"What's needed is more collective reflection on the costs of capitalism's new data relations for our very possibilities of ethical life."

Apart from asking isn't it too late already? How can we have a collective reflection when effectively no one is aware of the issues or problems?

<comment><USER3> This is why I believe we are the root cause. We, developers and tech aware. Your mentioned 1%.

This isn't about agencies or governments or even corporations anymore. It's about our work ethics. Developer ethics.

We babble around the internet about all the things we defend, but we don't even try not to embed Analytics in our clients websites.

We fear for the future, for the abuse of the technological systems, yet those under the dark robe of the NSA and others are readers of this same vehicle. They are here.

People call RMS radical and so many other things, but isn't history proving him right in many of his deviations? Heading for total disaster, yes we are.

We, the ones who built and delivered computers and the internet to the world, are doing a job for corporations and not for users. If you're paid, you put your tail between your legs and comply.

This is about changing our developer attitude, our developer community. Maybe only we understand the battlefield, but still the fight is our hands now. We must protect those we love and those we have never met. We must stand up and fight the fight for them, just the way we expect a doctor to have built the knowledge and to act ethically when taking care of us, just like we expect a civil engineer to build stuff with quality and respect for our well being, we must also act honorably like that, even if it means we loose money.

The developer community, hidden behind screens, have been bought by the big man money, and act to the people as blind policemen throwing bombs at the demanding population.

<comment><USER2> I think you're right, on all points, but that leaves us deeply screwed.

I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be needing a new job.

It's interesting you mention doctors and engineers, two professions that have more accountability and two well subscribed professional bodies. If doctors were being asked to surveil patients or report something, as governments will occasionally suggest, the BMA will shout rather loudly. The press listen, write up a piece with suitably scary headline, and the govt changes mind (usually).

The IET (UK Engineering body) has double the global membership of the BCS (computing) which is in far more countries. I'm going to hazard a guess there's more in tech than engineering.

I'm not aware of any tech or professional bodies that attract anything but a tiny minority. We can't blacken the web like the Googles and Facebooks can in the face of stupidity like SOPA. Without some group body we're left with signing change.org and blogging. If we don't take a job there's millions who will - FB and Google are in the top 5 best places to work, yet are part of the problem.

<comment><USER4> > I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on > our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. > If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be > needing a new job.

If someone does something morally wrong, it is not made morally acceptable by the possibility that someone else might have done it. Justifications that use the kind of reasoning "If I had not done it, someone else would have done it." come most often from people who might lose something (or not gain something) from doing the morally acceptable thing. I suspect it is just selfishness that makes people cling to such justifications, no matter how weak those are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before I started my current job as a programmer, I made it clear that I do not want to work on unsolicited advertising, surveillance or weapons technologies – the common reason being that I value enthusiastic user consent. Being hired by a company after having stated these preferences makes me confident that I will not be asked to work on anything of the above.

The "enthusiastic" bit is the important part: When a user browses a web site, that user does not enthusiasticly consent to being profiled for marketing activities. Whereas: When someone answers a questionaire about consumer behavior to get a bargain or collects points for a customer loyalty program, then you have explicit and unambiguous consent.

Besides being explicit, consent should be given freely. An ultimatum (like "If you do not accept the new privacy guidelines, you will never be able to see your family photos again.") does not result in freely given consent.

When I interact with non-free software or "social networking" web pages I often notice dialogs that remind me of how really pushy people behave. If I ever come across a person that creates these kinds of dialogs that do not give users a real choice about what is happening, I might just ask them if I should hit them in the face "now" or "later" just to see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER5> """ Like Kant, Hegel believed that the greatest good was free will, but he went further in clarifying what freedom might involve. For Hegel, freedom is impossible without the self having some space of autonomy where it can be in a reflective relation with itself. As he put it:

… freedom is this: to be with oneself in the other. Here the self is not isolated, but endlessly being mediated through the world: the world of other things and people, and of its past self and actions. But it can be free if it comes to grasp such processes as its own – related to its goals and not those of others. It is just this that becomes harder to sustain under surveillance capitalism. """

</comment><comment><USER6> Ironic that they have Google Maps on their website [http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/](http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/) .. I guess they're fine with identifying all of their users' political persuasion.</comment>


Distant Matters: Email traffic data casts doubt on global village theory - <AUTHOR> http://beta.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23717/

<comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=665111></comment>


The War on Sugar Hits the Juice Box - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-war-on-sugar-hits-the-juice-box-11566133201?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> This is typical woke-capitalist garbage.

Real juice is just fine to drink - in moderation! Before getting some exercise, it's a great boost, has vitamins, easy energy, and it's an excellent bribe. It's also trivial to get juiceboxes that have extremely simple ingredient lists so you can be reasonably sure you're not going to be feeding your kid anything that kids haven't been consuming for millenia.

Should kids have it every day? No, probably not! They need to be used to drinking water as their fundamental beverage. "Fruity water" as a replacement for normal water simply inculcates them with the idea that plain water is gross and not good enough, and that they should demand some enhanced alternative. It does nothing to stem the habit-based dietary issues people end up with - after all, if you're used to fruity water and the only available options are juiceboxes and water, there's no way you'll be satisfied with the latter.

Increasingly it looks like there's a push to serve our kids things even less organic than we used to. Beyond Meat or maggot burgers, fruity water, it's like there's a war on normal, real products. Why are we assuming these new untested alternatives are somehow better or, at least, not fraught with most of the failure modes of their predecessors?</comment>


What's New in Apache Kafka 2.3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.confluent.io/blog/whats-new-in-apache-kafka-2-3 <comment><USER2> Apache Foundation version ftw:

[https://blogs.apache.org/kafka/entry/what-s-new-in- apache](https://blogs.apache.org/kafka/entry/what-s-new-in-apache)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I've seen those little chat assistants that live in the corners of web pages before, but this is the first one that plays a continuously looping animation with flashing lights while I try to read an article. Sadly, the bot doesn't understand the command "go away"... it just asks for my email address so a real person can follow up later.

Anyways, the performance improvements for resuming after an ungraceful shutdown sound nice.

<comment><USER4> This chat pop up covered the "OK" button for the cookie warning on my display. So essentially I only had 90% of my vertical resolution to read this article.

<comment><USER5> Sadly, 90% can be considered a lot nowadays. It's not uncommon for me to find websites who manage to cover more than 50% of their layout with useless shit. Sigh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The flashing tab on this site is absolutely abysmal. Who thought this was a good idea.

> You have (1) new message!

What is this, a "local singles in my area" scam site or an interesting blog? And it's a message to ask if you need help no less!

</comment><comment><USER7> Lovers of Kafka may be interested to know that thanks to Mingmin Xu, Apache Calcite's latest release adds an adapter for Apache Kafka. Calcite allows you to write optimized SQL queries against a variety of data sources and is used by Apache Hive, Apache Drill, and others.

[https://calcite.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/calcite/adapte...](https://calcite.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/calcite/adapter/kafka/package- summary.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Much better source: [https://blogs.apache.org/kafka/entry/what-s-new-in- apache](https://blogs.apache.org/kafka/entry/what-s-new-in-apache)

</comment><comment><USER9> Confluent maven repo seems unusable for all people behind a Nexus proxying external repos, which is AFAIK a very common case. So what is the problem in making the maven repo browsable?

This could be solved by making [http://packages.confluent.io/maven](http://packages.confluent.io/maven) browsable. Is there a reason that this hasn't been done?

Why cant a company like confluent fix one of the most basic issues for such a long time ?

[https://github.com/confluentinc/schema- registry/issues/759](https://github.com/confluentinc/schema- registry/issues/759)

</comment><comment><USER10> I am waiting for an event bus. Why a messaging product does not have an event bus?

<comment><USER11> I don't understand what you're waiting for. You can easily build an event bus using a Kafka topic.

<comment><USER10> An event bus of Kafka internal events. Like "consumer group rebalanced", "topic created"...

<comment><USER11> Ah yep, with you now. While I know you can register a consumer rebalance listener, tools that respond to changes in topic configs seem to do so by polling - e.g., Mirrormaker 2. [https://github.com/ryannedolan/kafka/blob/KIP-382/connect/mi...](https://github.com/ryannedolan/kafka/blob/KIP-382/connect/mirror/src/main/java/org/apache/kafka/connect/mirror/MirrorSourceConnector.java)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you keep your work/personal accounts separate? - <AUTHOR> Not in terms of email, or cloud space, etc. But in terms of using your personal laptop or desktop for work or visa-versa. Do you create a different use account just for work? <comment><USER2> Check your invention assignment agreement with your employer. The company may have the right to search and audit any device you use for work, even if it's your personal laptop.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't usually mix personal hardware and software with work. The Corp usually hired me for "works for hire" (which is the typical arrangement in the US), which means anything I create is theirs. Mixing in my personal hardware muddies the waters about who owns what, so it's just better to let them provide the hardware/software to do the job and use that instead of using my stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> Separate hardware</comment>